by WD Clarke
—We can’t keep it a secret forever.
—No, I.
Pill embraced him hard, to catcalls, whoo-whoos, beer glass-and-bottle poundings and deafening applause. Fat continued:
—And now for our feature. Some of you know it as.
—The Cable Guy! someone shouted.
—We like to call it, well what do we call it, Pill?
—We call it, Pill said, basso profundo, ‘The Fuckin’ Fucker’s Fucked’.
—Yeah.
—Or ‘Fuck This Fuckin’ Shit’.
—Yep.
—Or whatever the fuck we call it.
—Eggs-ackly.
—And so, Pill said, here yas go. And he waved his right arm towards some unseen soundman, who started a very crackly, hiss-filled tape recording of a tape recording taken from a tape recording of a 1st generation copy of a tape-recorder style answering machine:
[Beeeep.] Where’s the fuckin’ service you cocksuckers? I paid for the fuckin’ shit why don’t you fuckin’ bring it onnnn? Sick a’ you bunchoffucking baaaastards.
[Click-thump.] Where’s the fuckin’ cable? I’ve been payin’ you sluttin’, fuckin’ assholes all along an’ I got no fuckin’ TV! Jeeee-sus fuckin’ Christ what in fuck do you want for fuck-all? [Click-thump.]
[Beep-click.] I’ve been phonin’ all these God-damn, cocksuckin’ fuckin’ numbers you got in this fuckin’ phone book, and they’re all busy. Well my cable’s fucked and you’re gonna hear from me ANYWAY. [Pause.] You bunch of Goddamn cocksuckin’ fuckin baaastards. [Click-thump, click.]
[Beep.] I don’t wanna sell fuck-all, I wanna watch fuckin’ TV. You cocksuckin’ fuckin’ whores you got all these fuckin’ numbers in the Goddamn cocksuckin’ fuckin’ phone book, and they’re all fuckin’ busy. I’m a workin’ man, I pay your cocksuckin’ fuckin’ bill, why in the name a’ JESUS GODDAMN COCKSUCKIN’ FUCKIN’ CHRIST can you not SUPPLY me the GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKIN’ WHORE’N’SLUTTIN’ FUCKIN’ GODDAMN COCKSUCKIN’ FUCKIN’ SERVICE? [Click-thump-thump.]
[Beep-thump, long pause, thump, beep, click, beep.] Hell-o you Dogan-faced, mother-fuckin’, cock-suckin’, whore-n-sluttin’, God-damn, by-the-Jesus, fuckin’ God-Damn, sluttin’, fuckin’ Baaastards. Where’s the fuckin’ cable? PAYIN’ for the fuckin’ shit and I ain’t fuckin’ GETTIN’ it. GET IT ON THERE! you buncha fuckin’ baaastards. [Scraping click.]
[Beep-thump, pause, beep, click click beep.] I can’t watch AUTO-Mag without fuckin’ TEE-VEE. Where’s the service you bunch of Goddamn cock-suckin’ fuckin’ baaa-stards? [Thump-ump.]
[Beepclick.][Despondent.] I hate payin’ for sumpin’ I don’t have. I cannot watch your Auto-Mag magazine if I do not have the service. I’ve been phoning all the other numbers that’s been ringing busy; this is the only number I’ve been able to get a ring-from. So where’s the COCK-suckin God-DAMN whore’n’sluttin’ by-the-Jesus fuckin’ SERVICE[Thump-click.]
[Beepclick.] It’s me again Mother-fuckers. I have no fuckin’ cable. You bunch of God-damn, whore-n-sluttin’ fuckin’ overpaid cocksuckers are doin’ FUCK-ALL, for what I’m PAYING YOU… JEEE-SUS CHRIST you oughta try do what I do for a fuckin’ livin’. [Thump-ump click-click.]
[Beep.] Hell-o mother-fuck-ers … My cable’s back on, thank you very much.
—Um, wow, said Dr. Ed.
—Yeah, said Doug.
—He’s got rhythm, I’ll give him that, said Dr. Ed. Where’s he from, exactly?
—We’re pretty confident he’s a local, said Doug. Fat’s friend Steve, well his brother Brian’s girlfriend works at Cablenet, and he said she said she got it off the after-hours answering machine there.
—Wherever it’s from, said Dr. Ed casually, yet with an unmistakable air of authority in such matters, they’d have to have a sizable Orange community.
—Orange? said Doug, quite puzzled.
—Irish Protestant, after William of Orange. Glorious Revolution, 1688, Dutchman made England safe from Catholicism forever. You know.
Doug did not know. —Huh, he said?
—The guy on the tape said ‘Dogan-faced bastard’, which means ‘Irish Catholic bastard’, like me.
It crossed Doug’s ‘mind’, though not in so many words, that his drinking companion was speaking somewhat ex cathedra-lly here.
—Oh, he said, not really cottoning on.
—Where I come from, he said, pointing in the direction of the far east end of the Lake, from Noman’s Island….
—Where? said Doug, who was from the City and not at all interested in local geography.
—Just east of town, where the end of the lake funnels down into the river. Anyway, we have a long history of Protestants versus Catholics. Every July the Orange Proddy Dogs as we called them would parade through town to lord over us Dogan-faced bastards their King Willy’s thrashing of us at the Battle of the Boyne, and we’d always have a bit of a scrap with them.
This was a lie, for Dr. Ed had never willingly fought anyone in his life.
—Oh yeah?
Dr. Ed then uncharacteristically noticed that Doug was not in the least interested in any of this, but, somewhat pre-occupied perhaps with that thing concerning his by-now-ex-girlfriend, was only pretending to listen, out of what seemed to be natural politeness, so he said:
—Where is your family from, Doug?
—You mean originally? The Ukraine. My grandparents settled in Thunder Bay, and most of my family is still there, but my dad went to the City. Um, Ed, I’m kinda curious about what you said earlier, about your ‘alleged son’ as you call him. You said that at first you thought I was him, when, you know, you knocked over my buddies’ table of beers back there.
Dr. Ed’s face reddened. —Jesus, wasn’t that embarrassing, he said. I didn’t mean to make your friends up & leave on you.
—Fugg-gedd-aboud-it, said Doug, who had been speaking seriously, but who became jovial once more at Dr. Ed’s super-seriousness. They were leaving anyway. They’d accomplished their goal of getting me here and getting some serious brewskies into me, so I could drown my sorrows etc., but they haddta go do a last-minute concrete cram.
—Concrete cram?
—For tomorrow’s test.
—We’re uncivil engineers. It’s for a ‘Strength of Materials’ course. You know, concrete, steel … and next is wood.
—Huh.
—Anyway, I’d like to hear you out on that, that, er, issue of yours, cos’ I’d rather think about something else, about someone else’s shit right now, and….
—Wouldn’t you just rather keep it, um, light? said Dr. Ed. Considering the, the circumstances I mean.
—No. Not really. I’m guess I’m kinda in a serious mood, and, well, I think I’d just … rather talk about your troubles, rather than mine.
—I don’t have ‘troubles’ said Dr. Ed, suddenly as defensive as someone on high levels of codeine mixed with alcohol could get.
—I just thought you, you looked like someone who, who wanted, or needed to talk.
—I never talk, said Dr. Ed.
—Not even, said Doug, to your wife?
—Especially not to my wife, and especially not about, about….
—About what?
Dr. Ed couldn’t for the life of him fathom just what about.
—About not talking, for instance, he said.
—Why not? said Doug, simply.
—It’s complicated, said Dr. Ed. Life gets like that. You’ll see.
—But you do want to talk to someone, right, or….
—Or I wouldn’t be sitting here with you? No. Not at all, ever. I came here because I wanted a drink, and I guess I wanted a drink because, because, like you, I wanted to escape for a bit. It doesn’t happen often, but every now & then, every couple of years anyway, I need to blow off a little steam.
—Here’s to blowing off steam, said Doug, raising his glass to clink with Dr. Ed’s, both men taking large gulps. And here’s to staying safely out of the deep end, he added, and then raised his gla
ss once more to clink his companion’s, but Dr. Ed had not reciprocated. Rather, he looked at Doug with a something akin to a pedantic expression on his face.
—Listen, he said, I don’t know everything, but if 20 years of psychiatry have taught me one thing, it’s that there is no deep end, and that psychologists who tell you that there is one are either dupes or liars.
—I, um, said Doug.
—There is no deep, said Dr. Ed. No high or low.
—I’m not, said Doug.
—Hold on. You were just going to say, I bet, exactly what you said before, about G-d: ‘I’m not so sure’, right? Or ‘Maybe, maybe not’. But ‘Deep’, ‘G-d’? —Christ, those are just words, Doug. Words. Metaphors stabbing out at something that’s not there, and never was. Epiphenomena of the brain.
—Maybe. Like you say I said.
—You like to be sceptical. But real sceptics consider the evidence before them; they certainly aren’t romantic dreamers, and they aren’t idle fence-sitters either.
—Hey, hold on, Bud, you sayin’ I’m idle?
—Sorry. I, I have to deal with this all the time, at the clinic. It gets me angrier than I ought to be.
—S’okay. G’won, rant away.
—Where was I? said Dr. Ed.
—Evidence.
—Right. All of the evidence, don’t you see, points in one direction, and one direction only.
—Yeah, but what about love? Is that just a word, or an ‘epiphenomenon’ too? Doug smiled here, and leaned back on his chair so that only the back legs of his chair remained on the ground. He interlaced his fingers behind his head, elbows pointing out perpendicularly, and balanced himself there, smiling and waiting for the inevitable.
—Well, I wouldn’t want to sound like I’m rubbing your nose in it, but….
—But you are.
—No, but yes, it is just a word, Doug. Love’s a noun for something people ‘feel’, and it’s a verb, for something they do, or more accurately, for something they ‘think’ they do.
—Because….
—Because, just because they ‘think’ and ‘feel’ that it’s real, doesn’t make it so.
—Doesn’t make it not.
—And the evidence, Doug?
—Depends on what you mean by evidence.
—Oh come on. You’re a kind of scientist, aren’t you, I mean you believe in induction, right? Experimentation? Measure-ment, facts?
—That’s funny, said Doug, his chair coming down from its balancing act.
—What?
—You actually think people obey physical laws in the same way concrete does!
—And steel, and wood, that’s right, fundamentally, essentially, at bottom: yes.
—That’s what it all comes down to?
—You got it. Billiard balls, Doug. A complex interplaying of determinants, but still, at bottom, physical pathways of causation.
—You know, Ed? For a smart old guy, you’re sure pretty young and dumb.
—What?
—Hell, I’m only, what, 21, but you, you remind me of myself when—How old are you, anyway?
—44.
Doug laughed again. —Well, then you’re a 17 year-old 44 year-old. Or a 44 year-old 17 year-old, whichever.
Dr. Ed forced himself to pretend to see the ‘humour’ in this, and then expelled a peculiar, emphysemic kind of laugh, which ended in a half-smile. —Both, he then said, after a pause. I guess you could say I’m both.
—Hey, I’ll drink to that, said Doug.
Doug’s joke had turned Dr. Ed, despite the alcohol & pills, into his naturally serious self once more. —But 17, eh? he said. I suppose I know what you’re trying to say, but then again, you don’t really know me, do you?
—True, I don’t, but s’pose I use your own scientific approach on you.
—How do you mean?
—Your behaviour, tonight, follow the bouncing billiard balls—it’s not exactly characteristic of you, I’d bet. I mean, you don’t generally hang around in undergraduate pubs, let alone after-hours clubs, do you?
—No.
—What are you looking for, Ed?
Dr. Ed was about to say that Doug had it all wrong, that the billiard ball paradigm didn’t rightly attempt to deal with such fictions as ‘motivation’, when, out of the blue (realizing as he spoke that he was being honest for the first time in a very, very long while) he said:
—I don’t … know. Then, regaining his balance, he added, after a pause: Oblivion, I suppose.
—No, not really you’re not. You could get that on any street corner.
—Not at this time of night.
—I bet that in your house, your liquor and medicine cabinets are fully stocked with oblivion.
—Well, Dr. Ed conceded.
—Hell, and you’re a doctor! You could scam pretty well anything you wanted or thought you needed at the hospital. So no, I’d say you’re here for a different reason, just like me. We’ve both succeeded in getting drunk, but instead of being satisfied with that and with chanting with the shovelheads, we’re here talking to each other, why’s that d’ya think?
—You tell me, you’re the wisenheimer, said Dr. Ed.
If Dr. Ed had looked (and he did not) he would have noticed that Doug appeared suddenly grave, vulnerable even.
—Ok, Doug said, I’m, I guess I’m talking to you because … I dunno, I s’pose that even though getting drunk took the, the edge off things just now, I, I still want her back….
—Bitch though she is, Dr. Ed interrupted.
—Granted, said Doug. But if I can’t have that, I’d like, I’d want … to talk about it, with someone who can empathise, someone who’s been there.
—I’m not a particularly empathetic fellow, said Dr. Ed.
—You mean you don’t like to be, or want to be. But you want reality too, or part of you does, or you wouldn’t be at this table talking to me, like this.
—Huh.
—I think, said Doug, it’s time you told me your story.
—What, which story?
—Whatever it was or is that made you come here tonight, and then got you talk to me.
Dr. Ed then looked closely at this boy for the second time that night. Doug did not resemble his ‘son’ as much as it had seemed to him at first. His nose was a bit of a pug, while Ted’s was aquiline, like his own. Doug’s ears were also small, while Ted’s, again, like his own, stuck out a fair bit, with detached lobes. Doug’s mouth was much smaller than either Ted’s or Dr. Ed’s, and his hair was straight and fair, but his own (or what was left of it), like his ‘son’s’ hair, was black, thick and curly. Wait a minute, then, he thought, then how could, how could he ever have thought that Doug resembled….
Then it struck him: Doug’s eyes, like his own, like Ted’s, were dark, a bit on the full side, and with something, with a kind of asceticism about them. They were the kind of eyes you instinctively avoided, especially in the mirror, because they always made you feel like they wanted something from you. Like now: that’s just what Doug’s eyes were doing, they were asking him to go somewhere that he didn’t want to go.
Not only that, but Doug talked like—like a university lecturer for Chrissakes! He reminded Dr. Ed of himself, or worse, of a philosophy or sociology professor, or….
Dr. Ed ‘felt’ like blood vessels were coming to the surface of his entire body, preparing him, getting him ready for fight and/or flight, to bolt or bite. He screwed his butt to the chair with all that remained of what ‘felt’ like his free will: there had already been enough embarrassment in the past 24 hours, he told himself.
—My story, he said.
—Your story.
—I, I have a son, Ed said, for the first time ever without inverted commas. I have a son, and, for the past few nights, I’ve been having this recurring dream….
—Holy Shit, said Doug, that’s some dream alright!
And it was, and then Ed said nothing, which was only appropriate, and then Doug went to
get them some more skunkspiss beer, which was also appropriate, because more beer was required, not to escape reality now, but to aid & abet its soaking in: for Ed was clear now, not at all in the sense of ‘free & clear’, but clear in the sense of seeing, if no more than this, still, at least this: that a father needs to be a father to his son, just as a son needs to be the son of his father.
And this was no mere metaphysical concept or allegory. No, it was entirely practical; it had to do with the tangible here & now, not to mention a very much real, if long unacknowledged, past. It had to do with Ed and Ted. It also had to do with Agnes; that too he would have to clear up. But first things first. First, he must go and see Ted, his son. His own, his only son.
The next tray of beers passed, largely, in silence, and then it was time, and he and Doug parted with a manly, unashamed bearhug. Doug was (like most of the clientele here) still going strong, but Ed ‘felt’ more than a little bit wobbly as he weebled towards the door.
Dan Shboom was still, faithfully, waiting for him. He had shut the engine off, but was reading by the Caprice’s somewhat dim interior light.
—What time is it? Ed asked him through the driver’s side window, with a buoyancy not entirely attributable to the anaerobic conversion of maltose (and, in the cheaper brands of ale that filled the trayfuls of glasses at the club, glucose), by certain strains of yeast, into ethyl alcohol.
—Just after 4, said Dan, not a little surprised by the change in his fare’s demeanour. Ed opened the rear door and slid his butt, with the aplomb of a national-class curler, across the red vinyl bench seat.
—What are you reading? he asked.
—The Prison Notebooks, by Antonio Gramsci, said Dan, pulling the steering column mounted shifter to the right, to ‘D’, and shifting the car into Drive. Where to now?
—27 Raglan Road, my son’s house. Then you’re a free man.
—Ok.
—Now who’s this Gramshee?
Dan took a good look at the guy. If he’d asked Dan earlier that evening, there would’ve been no way that Dan would’ve bothered making the effort, but now, especially after such a generous tip, well, why not? —He founded the Italian Communist party, he said.
—Communist? Ed said in a loud voice, and right then Dan was sure that he’d judged him amiss, but then Ed continued: My son’s a communist!